14-year-old headed to adult prison after violently raping girl

Updated 10:45 pm, Friday, July 25, 2014

A Kent boy who lured, raped and brutalized an 8-year-old girl before telling police she forced him to do it is likely headed to prison.

Michael Harrell, 14, raped the girl last fall in a wooded area of downtown Kent. The vicious, prolonged attack left her with a serious head injury and numerous other injuries.

“The defendant targeted an 8-year-old girl that he barely knew, luring her away from her home,” Senior Deputy Prosecutor Charles Sergis said in court papers.

“He proceeded to pound on her face with his fists to gain her compliance,” the prosecutor continued. “When she told him to stop and that she wanted to go home, (Harrell) proceeded to hit her in the face again before raping her.”

Harrell, tried as an adult, is expected to be sentenced Friday morning to 7½ years in prison. He faces a lifetime of supervision by the Department of Corrections.

The investigation began at 4:30 p.m. on Nov. 7, 2013, when a partially dressed, shoeless 8-year-old girl staggered into the lobby of the Kent Red Lion Inn. The bloodied girl was wearing only a shirt and socks.

Scratched and bruised, the girl told staff at the 74th Avenue Southeast hotel that she’d been raped moments before. Kent police arrived to find the girl bleeding from various scratches and covered in welts. Her left eye and cheek were swollen from a punch.

The girl appeared on the verge of fainting as she told police a near-stranger – Harrell – raped her in a wooded area nearby.

Having met Harrell once or twice before, the girl said Harrell told her he had a surprise for her. He then lured her into a secluded spot where he knocked her to the ground, pulled off her clothes and raped her as he beat her face.

During the attack, the girl momentarily broke away and attempted to run. Harrell knocked her into a thorny bush and then punched her hard in the head, knocking her unconscious. Harrell, the prosecutor said, “essentially left his victim for dead and walked away.”

The girl woke up alone and ran to the hotel, where she reported the attack. It was later determined she’d suffered a concussion in addition to her more obvious injuries; her left eye was still swollen partly shut days after the attack.

Police identified Harrell as a suspect shortly after the attack was reported. Duped by a police ruse, he admitted to having sex with the girl but attempted to blame the sexual assault on her; he also told detectives he thought the girl was 11, not 8, in an effort to excuse the attack.

Confronted with the girl’s bruised face, Harrell, who stands 6 feet tall and weighs 230 pounds, said he did so to escape from the 90-pound girl.

According to charging papers, the teen piled on unconvincing claims. The boy told detectives he regularly has strange girls and young women demand that he have sex with them. By his count, he’d had 30 sex partners before raping the girl.

Harrell was initially charged as a juvenile, as state law requires, given his age. At the prosecution’s request, the criminal case was transferred to King County Superior Court, where Harrell pleaded guilty as an adult to a first-degree rape charge.

Prosecutors and Harrell’s attorney are each expected to request a 7½-year prison sentence when the boy is sentenced Friday morning at the Norm Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent. Harrell faces a lifetime of monitoring by the Department of Corrections as well as an indeterminate sentence, which would allow prison officials to keep him locked up indefinitely if he’s thought to be too dangerous to be freed.

While he has no prior criminal history, Harrell has been painted as antisocial in school and family court records, Sergis said in court papers. He had run away from home and was living in an apartment without adult supervision when he raped the girl.

Harrell has been jailed at the Regional Justice Center since May after arriving from juvenile detention. He remains locked up on $250,000 bail, and is slated to be sentenced by King County Superior Court Judge Bill Bowman.